School kids find body in West Valley City canal
Updated: 9/15/2012 2:10 pm | Published: 9/14/2012 12:46 pm
WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah (ABC 4 News) - Police say a group of junior high school children discovered the body of a man in a West Valley City canal early Friday morning.
Police say the children were walking along a maintenance road at 4100 South and 5800 West when they spotted the body floating in the water, and called 911.
"We received a phone call from several juveniles and an adult that were walking down the canal road behind us an indicated what they believed to be a body in the canal," says Sgt. Mike Powell.
Sgt. Powell described later identified the victim as 43-year-old Richard Anthony Byrd.
It was a complicated crime scene. Divers had to look for clues around the body before removing it.
The body was caught on some kind of debris in the water.
they believe the body may have been in the water between 12 and 24 hours.
But the cause of death was hard to determine.
"(We were) not able to see well enough to be able to make any determination of that," says Sgt. Powell.
He say an autopsy will offer them insight about the cause of Byrd's death.
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